Download of the Week

Soul jazz with a broken beat amid electric shards and celestial voices all add up to one grand master funk fest of a double LP (double download isn't really the same, is it) titled Until The Quiet Comes. Steven Ellison, a.k.a. Flying Lotus sounds like he's at the top of his game and guests including Thom Yorke and Erykah Badu help him stretch his sound casting his sonic net even wider. Lovely.

Andrew Ashong's Flowers EP is the perfect end-of-summer treat with just enough heat to make you want to move real slow. Theo Parrish helps out and the duo weave a relaxed, beat-infused, rhythm and hues house party over three tasty tracks. Even though the title track was the summer's stunner, the B-side's "The Way She Moves" has me smiling and moving right now.

This wonderful recording is a blend of jazz and folk with Norwegian songs sung by Norway’s top vocalists including Helene Boksle, Sondre Bratland, Unni Wilhelmsen, Tomine Harket and Cecilia Vennersten. Now I have never heard of any of these singers, but the album fits together beautifully. As the title suggests, this is quiet reflective music with a touch of melancholy that is very well recorded. A large acoustic space with deep bass. And yes, this recording has dynamics; an overall DR13. Another 2L showpiece.

Has is really been 16 years since Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry wove their gossamer worldly musical threads into album form? Anastasis (Greek for resurrection) is the duo's new album and it's got all the Dead Can Dance you remember. For fans this is great news, for foes not so much. I have to be, as Glenn Miller said, in the mood but when I'd like to be awash in beautiful multicultural sounds with stunning vocals from Lisa Gerard floating over the top like icing on the Sargasso Sea, Dead Can Dance can certainly tickle that very particular fancy.

The Xx (Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie xx) arrived with a fully formed sound on their self-titled debut album from 2009 and their sophomore release Coexist continues where The Xx left off but strips even more layers from their slow, seemingly simple spare formulas which add up to...lovely.

Blue Coast Records is offering a free group of performances recorded at the 2012 California Audio Show. To access the downloads you must register with Blue Coast Records. The recordings were made live direct to 2 channel using the Sonoma System at 2.8 MHz.

Chan Marshall is back with Sun her first album's worth of original material in over six years. And Chan Mashall sings, plays every instrument and she produced this record as well so it's all self Cat Powered power pop. Meow. Marshall explains her songwriting process to the LA Times:

The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today.

There are lots of great (great) recordings available for free! and most appear to be at least CD-quality FLAC files. Here are a few I'd recommend (and these were the first three I downloaded):

Linn Records download of Sasha Cooke with the Colburn Orchestra If You Love for Beauty is my download pick of the week. Yarlung Records uses minimalist audiophile recording techniques and prefers to record in concert halls as opposed to studios. This 88.2/24 recording has wonderful acoustics for this mezzo-soprano with terrific performances of the Mahler "Ruckert Leider". I also enjoyed Chausson’s "Poeme de L”Amour et de la Mer".

Thanks once again to friend & colleague Stephen Mejias for pointing me to this oasis among what can seem like a veritable sea of sultry breathy vapidity—Diogenes MusicDigital Home for Experimental Music. I was dreaming about something exactly like this for some time, the kind of music I buy on LP but cannot find via download, so this site is literally a fulfilled desire. Some of the labels represented include Alga Marghen, alt.vinyl, Bo' Weavil, Dekorder, Fonal, Incus Records, Machinefabriek, MISF*TS, MonotypeRec, No-Fi, Ping Pong Productions, Presto!?, Singing Knives, Staubgold, Ultra Marine, and many more. A veritable freakin' gold mine for the mind.

I'm feeling sentimental, so here's a blast from our recent past—Burial's self-titled album released on Hyperdub in 2006 made a whole host of "Best of..." lists and it continues to...crackle. When I first heard it six years ago I wrote, Beautiful, transcendental, hypnotic music from anonymous Burial. Lee Perry’s Black Ark moves to Blade Runner’s LA and they have a baby called dubstep. Primate pirate drum dub crackled. i.e., I liked it even though it sounds so forlorn.

Stephen Mejias' email read: This one is severely awesome and the included link pointed me to DJ/PURPLE/IMAGE's new Head Tear of the Drunken Sun which I had been listening to the day before. I love when that happens.

Da Pacem (Give Peace) featuring the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Christopher Bowers-Broadbent on organ led by Pärt perfectionist Paul Hillier spans nearly 30 years of the composer's output. Here we have a collection of short-form sacred choral works both a cappella and with organ accompaniment and they are sparse, minimal, medieval, monastic, and lovely. If you go for that sort of thing.

In honor of Memorial Day, I thought a pair of related American masterpieces would be especially fitting. First up we have Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from a June 10, 1924 performance featuring George himself on piano and Paul Whiteman and his Concert Orchestra (abridged arrangement by "Ferdie" Grofé). You'll most likely have already noted based on the recording date that this is an "acoustical" recording meaning the sound was captured by a horn not a microphone (otherwise it would have been an "electrical recording") so it is an early example of HD (horn definition) music.

Any Cocteau Twins fans out there? If you go for dreamy washes of keyboards, fluid guitar, and angelic vocals floating over the top, all wrapped up into songs that are not afraid to sound beautiful, you may very well like Beach House. Bloom, released on Sub Pop!, is the fourth full-length from Baltimore-based Beach House who is Alex Scally (electric guitar, electric bass, piano, organs and keyboards, background vocals) and Victoria Legrand (vocals, keyboards, organ and piano) joined here by Daniel Franz on drums and percussion and Joe Cueto on Viola for "On the Sea". Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, !!!, Grizzly Bear, Deadbeat Darling, Blonde Redhead, and more...) gets co-producer credit.